Posts Tagged ‘GSP+’

A trade scheme that boosted Sri Lanka’s top export, garments, will remain in place while the European bloc completes a human rights probe that could lead to withdrawal of concessionary terms, Sri Lanka said on Tuesday. “We will enjoy the facility until the investigation is over,” S. Ranugge, secretary at the ministry of export development and international trade, told Reuters.The Generalised System of Preferences Plus (GSP Plus) had been due to expire at the end of the year, and the European Union said the rules governing its extension required a certification that Sri Lanka meets certain human rights standards.

Sri Lanka’s garment industry is worried that the duty free access it enjoys to European markets will soon be cut as a result of alleged human rights violations related to the government’s pursuit of a military solution to a long-standing ethnic conflict. EU trade concessions, known as GSP+, end this year and will come up for review in October. Already EU has indicated that continuance of the GSP+ depends on how well the Sri Lankan government is seen to be implementing 27 international conventions on human rights, labor rights and environmental standards. “It is totally based on fulfilling these conventions.

The European Union threatened on Tuesday to withhold trade concessions from Sri Lanka due to the island’s worsening human rights record. Colombo has come under fire for its rights record, with Human Rights Watch saying recently at least 1,500 people “disappeared” between 2006 and 2007 — mostly ethnic Tamils living in the island’s restive north and east. The New York-based rights group said Sri Lanka was one of the world’s worst perpetrators of “disappearances” and abductions and described the situation as a “national crisis”.